A brief survey was undertaken to assess the nature and severity of food scarcity experienced by a sample of 88 street youth in downtown Toronto, and to identify markers of vulnerability to food scarcity. Almost half of the youth reported experiencing involuntary hunger or food deprivation during the previous 30 days. Youth who were literally homeless (i.e., on the street or "squatting" in aband...

This paper presents HEALER, a software agent that recommends sequential intervention plans for use by homeless shelters, who organize these interventions to raise awareness about HIV among homeless youth. HEALER’s sequential plans (built using knowledge of social networks of homeless youth) choose intervention participants strategically to maximize influence spread, while reasoning about uncert...

BACKGROUND Research on street children and youth has shown that this population is at high risk for substance use. Though risky sexual behaviours have been investigated and widely reported among street youth in resource constrained-settings, few studies have explored the relationship between substance use and other risk behaviours. This study was therefore conducted to examine the association b...

Using intensive qualitative interviews with 40 homeless youth, this study examined their early family histories for abuse, neglect, and other family problems and the number and types of transitions that youth experienced. Multiple forms of child maltreatment, family alcoholism, drug use, and criminal activity characterized early family histories of many youth. Leaving home because of either run...

Homeless youth are a highly vulnerable population and report elevated rates of substance use. Prior work on mitigating use among homeless has primarily relied survey data to get information about youth, which can then be used inform the design targeted intervention programs. However, such is often onerous collect, limited by its reliance self-reports retrospective recall, quickly becomes dated....

This paper focuses on a topic that is insufficiently addressed in the literature, i.e., challenges faced in transitioning agents from an emerging phase in the lab, to a deployed application in the field. Specifically, we focus on challenges faced in transitioning HEALER and DOSIM, two agents for social influence maximization, which assist service providers in maximizing HIV awareness in real-wo...

Some studies suggest lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) teens are at higher risk than peers for violence at home, in school, and in the community. That can bring them into the child welfare system or services for runaway and homeless teens. This study compared self-reported experiences of sexual and physical abuse based on sexual orientation and gender in seven population-based surveys of youth. ...